Sunday, January 6, 2013

Effects of Media

Recently in class we learned about how the media affects teenage culture. Our question was "Does the media affect teenage culture or does teenage culture affect the media?" It's a question that really no one can answer, like the chicken and the egg, which one did come first? Personally, I think its a little bit of both. The media definitely has an affect on teenage culture, and I think that teenage culture does somewhat have an effect on the media. The media tries to intrigue teenagers and tries to get them to do certain things such as lose weight. That effects the media and teenage culture at the same time.

The effect media has on a teenagers' body image is immeasurable, says teens.lovetoknow.com. Many ads say that you need to be skinny to be pretty, which isn't true. Many teenage girls want that model figure because they think that girls like that live a perfect life. The girls do anything to become like them, and they end up hurting themselves in the process. They go on crazy diets that make them sick, they exercise too much and they hurt themselves in the process. Teenage girls aren't the only people affected, however. Teenage boys are also greatly affected. They see advertisements for acne-free skin and automatically their instinct is to want that. They also see ads with guys with toned muscles and they want the, so they go on crazy diets and if they want them that bad, they take steroids and that can get them in a lot of trouble if they want to participate in sports. Also, many ads for certain games and other things are violent. This promotes violent behavior in adolescents. Many people get very into these video games and they get aggravated when something doesn't go exactly how they wanted it to go. This transfers into real life and they get even more angry at people and themselves. Clearly violent ads have a negative effect on teenagers. So many teenagers change themselves every year because of the media. If we didn't pay so much attention to what the media says, we would be an entirely different person, most likely. I believe that we should pay some attention to the media, but our life shouldn't revolve around it.